Where?

All major operational and head office centres.

Employers?

All major financial services companies.

So, you have a degree in accounting and finance, or a professional qualification . . . Where next?

Financial services firms like accountants. As a result, they can be found in a number of roles within the banking and insurance sectors. Three major categories are outlined below.

Joining a financial services institution as a trainee or fully qualified professional accountant

Entering the industry as a professional accountant is an obvious choice. All banks and insurers are essentially numbers institutions, so they need to have large and robust finance departments. Once you know the industry, there will be ample opportunity to break out into other areas and develop a very valuable specialism. Some of these are described below (see Using your accounting and finance degree and your professional experience outside the finance department).

The post of finance director - often also known as chief financial officer (CFO) - is one of the top jobs in a bank or insurance company. CFOs can be paid salaries of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

One of the most important units that reports to the CFO is the Treasury, which is the part of the bank that manages its money (or the money that it needs). Treasury trades in the money markets, either to earn interest on the massive balances that banks have, or to borrow when they have lent more than is in the vaults that day. Many finance professionals work in the Treasury.

Banks and insurers can be your route to obtaining qualifications as a management accountant. The large firms will have graduate training programmes for professional management qualifications, including chartered management accountant, chartered certified accountant and even, in some cases, chartered accountant.

Joining the non-accounting graduate training programme after you complete your accounting and finance degree

Accounting and finance degrees are often seen as the ideal entry point for all graduate programmes because financial services require numeracy and business understanding. So, for those who don’t want to study for professional qualifications to achieve management or chartered accounting status, joining a non-accounting graduate trainee programme in a financial services company can be an attractive option. See Retail banking graduate entry programmes and Business banker

Using your accounting and finance degree and your professional experience outside the finance department

• Regulation and compliance  - accountants are widely employed to help banks respond to changes in the regulations that govern the way they carry out their business - see Compliance Officer. In addition, as part of their procedures to ensure that they are complying with regulations, many banks have an internal audit department. This department audits the bank’s procedures and processes, making sure that what employees are actually doing matches what is being reported, and that regulatory and compliance procedures are being properly carried out. People with an accounting background clearly have an advantage in this area with their understanding of audit processes and their eye for detail.
• Corporate finance - many people working in this highly paid area start off as chartered accountants. Their ability to value a company and understand the impact of different funding options makes accounting training a very useful launch-pad into this area.
• Equity research - this is another area that takes in a number of people with accounting and finance degrees or professional qualifications in finance. This is the department that analyses stocks and company performance, and makes investment recommendations. Clearly, the accountant’s level of financial understanding is an advantage here - so again, this is an area that employs a number of people who formerly worked as professional accountants.